ome, you'd have to go quickly."

"I'd go faster'n anything," decided the girl, throwing up her head.

"Your mother's father used to have a family in his tenement house on
this place, and they were all very fond of her when she was a girl.
One of the sons moved to Bellaire. He's the only one left, and would
help you, I know."

"Mebbe if you'd talk to my uncle----" Virginia cut in.

An emphatic negative gesture frightened her.

"You don't know him," said Singleton, biting his lips. "He's nearer
being a devil than any other human being." It was a feeling of
bitterness, of the deadly wrong done him, that forced him to sarcasm.
"The great--the good Jordan Morse--bah!" he sneered. "If he's 'good,'
so are fiends from perdition."

He sent the last words out between his teeth as if he loathed the idea
expressed in them. If they brought a sombre red to the girl's cheeks,
it was not because she did not have sympathy with him.

Sudden leaping flames of passion yellowed the man's eyes, and he
staggered up.

"May God damn the best in him! May all he loves wither and blight! May
black Heaven break his heart----"

Jinnie sprang forward and clutched him fiercely by the arm. "Don't!
Don't!" she implored. "That's awful, awful!"

Singleton sank back, brushing his foaming lips with the back of his
hand.

"Well," he muttered, "he followed me abroad and did for me over
there!"

"Did for you?" Virginia repeated after him, parrot-like, gazing at him
in a puzzled way as she sat down again.

"Yes, me! If I'd had any sense, I might have known his game. In the
state of his finances he'd no business to come over at all. But I
didn't know until he got there how evil he was. Oh, God! I wish I
had--but I didn't, and now my only work left is to send you
somewhere----Oh, why didn't I know?"

The deep sadness, the longing in his voice brought Virginia to her
feet once more. She wanted to do something for the thin, sick man
because she loved him--just that! Years of neglect had failed to kill
in the young heart the cherished affection for her absent parent, and
in some subtle way he now appealed to the mother within her, as all
sick men do to all heart-women.

"I'd like to help you if I could, father," she said.

The man, with a quick, spasmodic action, drew her to him. Never had he
seen such a pair of eyes! They reminded him of Italian skies under
which he had dreamed brave dreams--dreamed dreams which would ever be
dreams. The end o